It started with a raised eyebrow.
It started in a technical rehearsal for another play entirely, three years ago.
It started with a northern man sidling over.
His mind should have been on his music – he was, at that time, playing about a dozen instruments in a play about the invention of the hot air balloon, told by pierrot clowns. He was also playing the King of France. He had a very large moustache (he often does, when a bit of acting is required. The moustache is crucial.) His name is James Demaine.
“I’ve read about this strange story. True story. A Priest and a Tobacconist. Except he only ran the tobacco shop in the daytimes. By night he was a vampire hunter. And they both set out to destroy the Vampire that was terrorising Highgate. 1970s, this was. And they met to have a duel. A Magician’s Duel, they called it. On some blasted heath somewhere. To see who was the winner.”
I blinked. I had several lights to think about. Where they were pointing, and when.
“That’s good, that. Isn’t it?”
It didn’t take too long, no more than thirty seconds, to see that yes, that was good. That was very good.
We’ve been making theatre since 2017. Slightly before. We went to drama school together. The full ‘Withnail & I’. A down at heel Edwardian Hospital-cum-Hotel-cum-Morgue in South London which was, for decades, dedicated exclusively to the education of young actors by throwing a schmorgasboard of theatrical methods at the proverbial wall and seeing what stuck and what slid down it. Three years of this, and we were a theatre company.
Bag of Beard – named for the fact that I kept a paper bag full of false beard in my locker for a Jacobean tragedy. A bag of beard.
Ryan Hutton and myself are the joint directors, James Demaine acts, writes, plays music, designs sound and so does Samuel Heron. Over the years we’ve all been in them, we’ve all written them.
We’ve ran a theatre in Islington. We’ve gone up and down to Manchester. We’ve been making theatre, and a little bit of film, collaboratively ever since we started.
We have an idea. Sometimes the writing starts immediately. Sometimes we talk about it a while. Once we talked about it for seven years and wrote about three different versions of it. Often we improv, but not in tight t shirts with miming. We improv sat down while typing. Back and forth. We redraft. We make original music (well, Sam & James do). We get together. We put it on.
Original Words. Original Music.
Within the thirty seconds after James told the vampire story, we’d changed the names. And the accents. These were pretend fellas, now. So we can make them do what we like.
We decided they were called Sheffield & Farringdon.
One of us raised an eyebrow. Possibly a moustache was wiggled.
“Sheffield.” Said one, in greeting. Already pissed off.
“Farringdon.” Said the other. Can’t stand each other.
And that was enough to be going on with.
Our slogan is accurate. “More of this is true than we would like.”
It is true, we are assured, that Highgate Cemetary was broken into by a horde of people who had read in the papers that there was a Vampire loose – and they proceeded to dig up the graves, and some poor beggar found a decapitated head lying on the dashboard of his car the next day.
This is pretty horrible. I mean – it’s completely insane, that’s a given, but that can’t have been a fun morning for that particular car owner.
There were two men – this is true – and one was (or claimed to be) a Priest and the other was ran a tobbacconist’s shop and had an interest in the occult. Both were deeply involved in the hunt for the Highgate Vampire, although one subsequently said there was no vampire at all.
There was some kind of entity. But it wasn’t a vampire.
The fact of the matter is SO MUCH of this story is outrageously true. In our workshop performances, we had people who were there – older gents, with grey hair tied back in pony tails, sipping on pints of mild, who told us after the show “More of that’s true than you’d believe.” And rest assured, potential audience member, that this is a play that is wild, outrageous, silly, farcical, features an exorcism, a long-suffering technical operator, a pint of Bailey’s AND STILL we’re being told BY PEOPLE WHO WERE THERE that it’s pretty close to the facts (“The facts”……it was the 70s.)
So, many a Google rabbit hole awaits the unwary traveller who types in ‘The Highgate Vampire’ – you won’t believe what’s true. But if you want your creepy supernatural tales with a side serving of madness and a fair few laughs – may I direct you to the What’s On Page? Scroll down. There we are. Please do come and see us this Christmas. Sheffield & Farringdon would love to tell you the tale.
The Highgate Vampire plays at the Omnibus Theatre from 16 – 30 DEC
Tickets: https://www.omnibus-clapham.org/the-highgate-vampire/
